You absolutely should not stay where you are. You are also extremely unlikely to be able to make any positive changes there, the company product and needs “are what they are.”
I know I often feel guilty if I feel I'm not giving my best, trying my hardest, and helping out as much as possible. That affects all aspects of my life, including but not limited to my job.
One thing that helps me with this guilt is when I have concrete evidence that the other party is not acting with the same worldview.
In this case, you're trying to do the right thing and help your employer, but your employer is not heeding your reasonable demands to be put on something else. Basically, they're not thinking about finding a "win win", they're only thinking about what's best for them. They reckon they can force you to stay on this project, which is best for them, therefore that's what they do.
Given that they're not making an effort to help you despite you asking them to, I think it's reasonable to not feel guilty about doing the same i.e. thinking about yourself first. I mean you're simply playing the game, where they have decided the rules, which is just doing whatever is best for the person taking the action. You did not force them to create these rules, they decided on that. And you're not imagining they have this mindset, they have demonstrated it through their actions.
And don't get distracted by words, look at the actions. They may well say "we're all team players, we help each other!" then keep you on this project. It might be tempting to believe the words they say, but their actions demonstrate their actual values.
That helps me when this sort of situation comes up, I hope that helps you a bit.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-to-stop-feelin...
I'm guessing you are a giver and you are feeling resentful because too much is being taken from you. But it is actually your choice about how much to give that causes your resentment.
Watch for how others deal with giving and taking in work and romantic situations.
The ideal solution is to find a place to work that consists mostly of givers. It is not easy to find these places - look for somewhere that people never quit because they all like who they work with.
This comment feels ill-advised and poorly thought out, but it's a way of looking at life I'm still investigating for myself. Hopefully it helps, but I fear it could harm...
Find what males you happy, Don't just up and quit. Put your feelers out and see what you can find. Maybe schedule a 1on1 with you boss and express this (once you might have found a new position). Idk what your boss is like, but it doesn't hurt to be honest bro. Suffering through a job you hate is a torture unlike any. Best of luck man.
There's nothing quite like hitting the gym and lifting weights (or whatever you like), to get things pumping and getting dopamine hits.
Personally I find it a great way to not think about work and may help. IANAT
Start looking today — before you quit.
But first you have to chage the mindset. My realization is that, I need to be responsible to myself first. My family is second in order. My close friends is third, and then it goes on. The fucking job is at least out of Ring 5.
Once you realize that, you would agree that you simply should not let Ring 0 suffer for the sake of some Ring 6 or 7. And then you will start do paragraph 1. The best strategy is to find a new gig ASAP, but push it to 4-6 weeks before starting, then figure out a way to let the current company lay you off and pay some $$. Your manager and company obviously don't give you a fuck so let them pay you.
Honestly, I'd doubt that working with legacy code simply causes you to feel depressed.
You might have an actual depression and changing jobs might just make things worse.
Go see some therapist, at least do some online screening for symptoms of depression.
I've had a very good time at my first job where my only task was to maintain a horrible legacy Java codebase because I wasn't depressed.
I've had some tough months in my current job at a startup, working with modern NodeJS, Python + ML, Docker stack because I was depressed.
You are also experiencing something called "learned helplessness". Learned helplessness and depression are inevitable responses to long term stress. Inevitable means every human will experience it. You are stuck in a shitty job you hate and can't get out of and have no control over. The lack of control piece is fundamental to that stress. This is the rat in the shock box experiment. The rat becomes depressed because it can't control or stop the shocks.
You know you are depressed like the rat in the box... so take this very seriously and seek out a therapist and even ask your doctor about medication. The therapist will teach you skills to understand yourself and strategies to cope or change.. and the medications will probably help. Start with the professionals: a therapist and a medical doctor. Eventually you learn that the box is a lie and you can step out of it at anytime and go off free from the trap.
I've hated my job for the past 6 or 7 years. It's not going to be much better anywhere else. Even bouncing from team to team internally doesn't really make it better since they all have problems.
But you don't feel the same, despite being in the that situation. So it naturally follows that your depression is either a frame of mind, or something intrinsic to you, i.e not job dependent. Switching jobs can possibly cause you to not be depressed, but this is a bet that you actually don't have a problem vs sweeping the problem under a rug with a chance of occurring later, which is not a safe bet to take. As such, you should first and foremost seek therapy and psychological evaluation to figure out why you feel that way. It could be stress related, or it could be something else.
For me, what I though was depression was actually a combination of ADHD and being on the spectrum and stress as a result of that.
Also, to add to the above, you would not want incompetent people maintaining legacy applications. Those typically exist because they are stable, because they work, and their owner expects that to continue.
All of this leads me to think that maybe you are actually more valued than you believe.
With that in mind, may I ask what exactly is it that you find frustrating about the job?
You are probably feeling so mant emotions, I'll dare one guess: feeling disrespected since you wrote how they are pushing this undesirable project on you.
It's not easy to look for a job when emotionally charged, so I would set aside a space with silence and focus on the feelings. Repeat for a few days. Processing the emotions will help.
The fanciful suggestions about rewriting legacy apps in some fashionable new tool are fantasies. It never works other than for trivial apps
Talk to your bosses.
Explain the situation (as above is perfect - keep it short and sweet)
Suggest that if you leave they won't find a better replacement because the problem is structural. And that if you stay you'll probably burn out soon and that won't help anyone.
Ergo: the project is doomed every which way.
Except for one hope:
Ask permission to rebuild it from the ground up using modern tools and software engineering. Ask for one or two additional helpers to build a small team to do:
Full system analysis of what it's supposed to be doing
Requirements finding to identify what needs removing or updating
Building a POC replacement alongside the legacy
Implement using all the fun things, including AI assisted code translation
From this system's POV you're probably the last hope. If they say no then;
You tried
You can quit with a clean conscience and escaped a slow miserable death
What if it loses them their job and they struggle to get an equivalent job?
What if they have any financial responsibilities?
Great advice if you can change careers or easily slip into another position (which they've said they're worried they can't). Fine advice if you're a hippy hobo like me.
Hopefully they can find some other motivating force apart from the tech. Read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... Concentrate on other goals like learning how to influence the business, rather than technical goals.
"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is That it's better to regret something you have done Than to regret something you haven't done." "And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend,,,"
If the rebuild route doesn’t seem like it will work (OP might know this without the conversation), I think education is another viable path. When I don’t know much about a system, I don’t want to work on it. OP sounds the similar. Taking the time to learn about it and become the expert can make the tasks seem less daunting and can allow a person to find creative solutions or better ways to do things, working inside the existing systems.
For example, we had a legacy ITSM system everyone hated, so did I, until I spent time with it. I got a project working with the guy who had been running it for 10 years. I was able to learn from him, I got the white papers on it and read about the various ways things work, and was able to build things in there to solve problems I had, and our team had. In some places I went to the code to see how something worked, because the documentation wasn’t clear. In other cases, I ran a series of tests to better understand certain features. The fear and uncertainty around working within the platform went away, and I started to enjoy it. I became the go-to person in the company on some parts of it, because I took the time to get good at it.
9 times out of 10, when I hate something, it’s covering up for a lack of knowledge and fear around it. Then I have a choice, I can be depressed and miserable, run away, or take it on and learn/grow until the fear subsides and the depression linked to it fades.
Good point, I've experienced that. Equally I've experienced great frustration at things I can't understand, not from stupidity or lack of trying, but because the information is guarded or lost.
Interestingly we're getting back to the roots of why Stallman first set out on the Free Open Software mission.
The OP mentioned difficulty with opaque/obscure proprietary systems. I wonder if that's a factor at play?
How do I put this? Your feelings are a result of your frustration. Frustration can lead you to either anger or sadness. In your case, it is sadness. Anger gets work done. Sadness gets you go to connect more with those around you. And that includes looking for help like you are doing.
Frustration, frustration, frustration ... from having certain *expectations*, and yet finding a world completely different from those expectations. We can call it culture shock for lack of a better term because it has the same symptoms.
Let's rewind the clock. Turn back your expectations. Turn down your expectations. And reassess. You are not working on the greatest tech in the world. You are not that great to begin with. A great person can go through mud and come out to the other side because a great person is humble and less frustrated and does not have a problem with the disgust and difficulty of mud.
You are working on old tech. You are having to solve a problem no one can solve normally. You have to work a really long time to get this problem solved. It is not hard. It just takes a long time. And makes you feel like you don't know much. It is just really hard work and you wished you already knew how to do it.
Plus, you have so many great ideas and no opportunities to implement them. And this piece of garbage tech is completely different from your ideas. And that is more frustrating. You can't even fix it. But when was fixing the tech into your great idea even a choice... or a thought? Why did you even think that you could do this? Because you saw some stupid hacker friend who generated a great idea and great attention? And you are never going to get attention so now you hate your job? GROW up. You are not living a fable. You are living a reality that never gets lauded or talked about. Shun the ideas. Discipline yourself. There is a task that needs to get done. And it does not need greatness. It just needs discipline. Give that discipline some time. Soon it will morph to creativity in the boundaries you will soon learn exist. Then ... you can have your ideas.
(This is a note to me. Sorry if I came across too hard on you.)
Anyways, you should try both to find a new job, and (since it could last a little bit), try to improve your situation internally.
Also, when you interview for your next job, make sure you ask the devs what it’s like to work there, what’s the general code quality, is there a bunch of “legacy” stuff. People generally open up when it’s bad…
But in bigger picture you shouldn’t expect the job to entertain you. It is an infantile position.
Employees are paid to bring something meaningful to the table, not to have fun. Generally speaking.
Getting into open source work or working for a startup for free means doing more work for absolutely 0 compensation, some percentage of which will still be drudgery and annoying tech debt, while still wasting 40 hours a week doing something the OP hates. The chances are almost 0 that this helps the OP in any way.
Putting that same energy towards getting a new job or learning - which could involve some amount of open source work but isn't pointlessly pouring time down the drain for someone else's benefit - or therapy or exercise or almost anything else, is more likely to be beneficial.
